The Central Epidemic Command Center yesterday announced eight new cases of COVID-19 infections and three deaths, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in Taiwan to 306 and raising the total number of fatalities to five.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the center, said the new infections include seven imported cases and one domestic case.
The imported cases are three women and four men who returned to Taiwan from Egypt, the Philippines, the US and the UK between March 2 and March 22, and involve five clusters of cases.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
Case No. 300 is a student at the same school in the UK as two previously confirmed cases; No. 302 is a student at a US school with six previously confirmed cases; and No. 305 had visited relatives in the Philippines and had close contact with a previously confirmed case during the trip, he said.
Chen said cases No. 303 and No. 304 visited the US with a group of 10 people, in which a member had tested positive for COVID-19.
The domestic case, No. 299, is a five-year-old boy who is the son of case No. 269, a man in his 30s who was also reported as a domestic case on Saturday, he said.
Chen said case No. 269, who is a Ministry of Transportation and Communications official working at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, likely contracted the virus from case No. 277, a man in his 20s who tested positive a few days after returning from the Philippines on March 20.
Local media outlets reported that case No. 277 is a son of a ranking Tourism Bureau official, and that No. 277 had coffee with case No. 269 at the airport.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said that case No. 299 attended school on Thursday last week, but developed a mild fever in the afternoon, so the preschool class — 17 people in all, including teachers and classmates — has been ordered to undergo 14-day mandatory home isolation.
Chen said the father of case No. 277, as well as three coworkers of case No. 269, have also been placed under home isolation.
The center reported one death on Sunday night and two yesterday. Case No. 34 had a serious heart condition when she was hospitalized, recovered from pneumonia slowly after treatment, but died of arrhythmia and heart failure, CDC Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said.
Case No. 108 was a man in his 40s who led a tour group to Austria and the Czech Republic from March 5 to 14.
He had hypertension and poor cardiopulmonary function due to obesity, Chou said, adding that the man suffered respiratory distress on Wednesday last week and died of multiple organ failure.
The third fatality was case No. 170, a man in his 60s who had cancer and visited Spain before contracting COVID-19, Chou said.
The man had a serious case of pneumonia when he was hospitalized on Monday last week and died of acute multiple organ dysfunction, severe pulmonary infiltrates and respiratory failure.
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